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Dude, with a title like that, how can this not be great? I'll try not to let you down.
Yesterday was Friday (because today is Saturday. I am not sure if you are aware of how weeks work, so I just thought I'd offer a refresher. (Ed. It is actually Monday. I must once again apologize for the lack of blogging, but I don't currently have an internet connection) and because it was Friday, I used my afternoon and evening to do not schoolwork.
I could just leave the blog entry at that, since "not schoolwork" is broad enough that I could just leave it up to your imagination (and with the crazy title, that could be fun.... go ahead, try it before reading on.
Okay, ready? Hope you had a good daydream), but you know I'm not going to do that, because I'm long-winded.
So the first thing I did after school was head to the mall near my house for some groceries, which I was running fairly low on but had been unable to acquire because I was also running low on the thing that is generally exchanged for goods and services: money. Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts. Fortunately, Friday was the first pay-day of the year (and as I later found out, the first Friday of every month is pay-day for everybody who works everywhere, and therefore there's a specific word for the first weekend of every month because it's the weekend when everybody goes out and it's a big party!), so I had sufficient funds to get myself some eats and drinks.
Upon arriving at the store, I discovered that it was also Tigo Day! Tigo is my cell phone carrier, and every Friday is Tigo Day (getting paid and Tigo Day in one day?! Mayhem), which means if you put money on your phone on Friday you get all kinds of crazy bonuses (pre-paid cell phones are the norm here, I'll write a more detailed thingee about it sometime). So I decided to take advantage of Tigo Day, and put some money on my phone. Unfortunately, this took a while, and by the time I was finished I realized I didn't have enough time to go home, so I couldn't get many groceries; I just got a snack for the walk over to Colonial Music where I had plans to meet a friend who would help me look for a guitar.
I won't bore you with the details of the journey; suffice it to say I still had my books from school and was still wearing teaching clothes and I was still a little bit sick and it was friggin hot and it was a long walk and I had to backtrack a few times near the end of the walk so I was pretty exhausted when I got there. But this isn't a whining xlog, this is a xaving xlog.
So my friend M was delayed in getting to the store, but that was actually a good thing because it gave me a chance to try out a bunch of guitars for a while without being self-conscious about making M wait around. The store had a good selection of guitars, and I narrowed down my favourites to 2. I didn't want to rush into a purchase though, so we checked out 2 other stores in the area, neither of which had the selection of Colonial. Furthermore, M assured me that finding a used guitar is basically impossible, unlike in North America, the Land of Craigslist. So with that knowledge in mind, and also the infusion of cash, and also my hunger to play some geetar after a painful month-long absence, and also the help of M's friend-employee, I decided on one of the 2 top choices and, well, I bought it! Check it out:
Obviously, his name is Wally.
It's pretty great, it's got a nice sound and a built-in pick-up too (a luxury I have been without my entire guitar-playing life). Also, I recently got a pretty nice (or at least large) stereo-speaker system from K (it came with her apartment, but she wasn't using it), and I'm pretty sure I can use the speakers as an amp for the guitar as soon as I get a battery for the pick-up. Oh, and tomorrow I'm jamming with a couple musicians I met at a jazz bar! (Ed. that didn't happen, but it will at some point) Things are coming up musicdave.
So after dropping the guitar off in its new home, I met up with J, who had told me he had plans with his co-workers (he works at another school on the same street as me) and that t"You are going to really enjoy the place we're going to :-)"t (t" "t means text message quote). So after dropping by his apartment to see his incredibly awesome 5 year old son Little J (who is so bilingual he just speaks in both languages) we hopped in a cab and headed further "downtown" than I've ever been before (someday I'll do a post on the city, but I don't know it well enough yet).
The place we went to is called Las Vegas, and is like a huge open air restaurant/dance hall/bowling alley. Except they don't play bowling, they play a game called Tejo, which is kind of like horseshoes, except instead of throwing a horseshoe at a post you throw a rock at gunpowder. In the novice game, you throw from a distance a little less than a horseshoe pitch, or whatever they're called, and there's an expert version that's more like bowling distance. It might not sound very hard to hit something from horseshoe distance with a rock, but the explosions were pretty rare.
We stayed there for a couple hours, enjoying beer and loud music which inspired much dancing among the crowd, even though it was still early.
And then a Mariachi band came! It was someone's birthday or something, so they had been hired to serenade said person. It was a full-on affair, with 2 guitars, a guitarron (one of those friggin huge guitars), a violin, 2 trumpets and 2 singers, costumes and friggin huge sombreros (not as big as the friggin huge guitar). They played 3 or 4 songs, and then asked for requests, all of which they, of course, knew, and then one of the guys in the party who had hired them even sang a song and was incredible, showing up even the real singers.
We stayed for a while after the band left, and the good times continued. As you can imagine, dancing is a huge part of the culture here, and will likely inspire a post or 2 of its own later on. I'm picking up tips here and there, and got some (seemingly genuine, but who knows) compliments last night, particularly about my feet (always moving in the dancing around here). It was fun, and J has one co-worker in particular who was an amazing dancer, and I found out later to my complete and utter lack of surprise that he used to be in dance troupes professionally.
Eventually J and I left to go play dominoes with lesbians. I am only specifically mentioning the lesbian part because J felt it necessary to qualify the event in such a way every time he brought it up (in case you're wondering, the lesbians are J's friends, we didn't just go to some sort of lesbian domino bar).
Aside: I don't have much of a handle on the attitude towards homosexuality around here, but I get the idea it's a lot more difficult to be gay here than in the places I've lived before. Apparently, there was a gay teacher at school last year, and he didn't last very long, and I get the impression it was because of precisely this.
Anyway, the fact that we were playing with lesbians (and one gay dude also) wasn't the only distinguishing characteristic of this phase of the evening. Namely, we were playing dominoes! In a bar! And you don't even have to BYOD! They've got it all set up. When was the last time you played dominoes? I'm not even sure I've ever played dominoes properly. It was fun. We had a friendly game, but J pointed out some more serious looking games that were definitely being played for money (or, at least, the drink bill), were played in total silence (using knocks, like in euchre), and could result in heated arguments.
A fun curiosity of the bar: the men's bathroom was just at the back of the bar, like not even in its own room. There was a wall... which went about halfway, leaving the rest of the urinals exposed.
After dominoes ended, we turned to the game which took up most of the floor-space of the bar: pool. Except Colombian pool is totally messed up, man. It starts with most of the balls on the side in some particular arrangement (the girl sets it up for you, you don't touch it), and then the goal is to sink the balls in ascending order, like in 9-ball, but you get points for each ball you sink - the number of points is the number of the ball (i.e. 8 points for the 8 ball). You also lose points for things like scratches.
It was a fun night, and distinctly Colombian. Even though I hadn't planned on going out, since I had to get up early for Parents Day at school today, I'm glad I went, and I got enough sleep anyway.
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